


Pets Were Never an Option

by xtinethepirate



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Cats, Charles Is a Big Dorkface, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Erik is not a Happy Bunny, Fluff, Gen, His Erik? A Cat, Honestly Charles What Are You Thinking, Or Kitty, Raven has to put up with too much bullshit, Silly, a literal cat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 15:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11694774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xtinethepirate/pseuds/xtinethepirate
Summary: It was about as well thought out as any of Charles's schemes--which is to say, not at all. Raven would have liked to blame the alcohol, given that it had happened on the way home from the pub, but that wasn't even an anomaly, it was just... Thursday, for them.





	Pets Were Never an Option

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bobsessive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobsessive/gifts).



> For Bri, who is to blame for encouraging professor!Charles and cat!Erik thoughts, and who was in need of some sillies to speed her convalescence.

1.

" _Ah_ ," Charles said, pausing for a moment to take in the deluge of Biblical proportions from the door. In the warm, cozy clamour of the pub, neither of them had noticed the rain starting. "Well. Another round, then?" He turned on his heel, grinning sunny and unabashed and completely shitfaced.

"You have to teach tomorrow. I have to _work_ tomorrow."

"Mmm, quite right; you are a paragon of responsibility." Charles said it with such a beatific smile that Raven was only about half-certain he was mocking her--the last few beer-soaked hours made it hard to tell, with him. "Well then," he continued, looping his scarf around his neck with the deliberation of the drunk, and turning up his collar. "This will be rather bracing, I expect."

"Charles--!" _Cabs are something that exist in England_ , was how she'd meant to finish that sentence, but he was already out the door, whooping like an absolute moron as he dashed through the rain. Raven, like an incredibly responsible and put-upon younger sister, followed to make sure he didn't drown.

The rain was torrential, reducing Charles to little more than a smudge of darker grey against the ink-washed background of Oxford in a nighttime rain. She pulled her own scarf up over her head to try to keep her eyes clear, but it was a futile effort. The street lamps did little more than refract dazzling patterns across the rain as it pounded down and beaded on her lashes, blinding rather than illuminating, and it was a few blocks before Raven realized she couldn't even see the vague suggestion of motion ahead that had been her brother. Swearing, she ducked into someone's front stoop, dashing a hand across her eyes to try to clear them and peering into the watery shades of darkness. "Charles? Charles!"

Running footsteps, and then her brother was there, out of breath, hair plastered to his head and dripping into his eyes as he stepped into the temporary little shelter as well. For some ungodly reason he had taken off his coat, holding it bundled carefully in his arms like he was holding a swaddled infant. His shirt clung to his skin, almost see-through over his shoulders and forearms, and he was shivering. And still, somehow, grinning.

"Sorry," he panted. "Back. Shall we?"

"What the _fuck_ are you--?"

It was at times like this that Raven almost forgot she was the younger sister. For all his stuffiness, lectures about the value of education, and seeming inability to get laid, Charles had a streak of almost unfathomable irresponsibility sometimes that made Raven hear herself channelling their nanny from back home. _If you don't put that coat on right now, young man, you'll catch your death._

"Not here; you'll frighten him," Charles protested when Raven tried to grab for his coat (if only to throw it at his head), which...was not the argument she'd expected to hear. _Him?_ She realized there was a low sound coming from the bundle in his arms, and it was squirming in his grip, but Charles was off into the rain again before she could ask.

With the disadvantage of heels, Raven usually lost at these impromptu races, but now with his coat-bundle cradled carefully to his chest, she beat him handily to the front door of their building. As he passed her under the warm yellow lights of the lobby, she could see his lips moving, cheek resting against the coat, but couldn't hear what he was saying. Despite her curiosity, once inside their flat and cringing at the squelching of her shoes, Raven first went to the linen cupboard to grab a towel for herself, snagging a second one for Charles only on her way back down the hall after she'd changed into a dry robe and had started to scrub her hair dry. This was the last time she'd let herself be pulled into one of his drunken "good ideas," she told herself (admittedly, not for the first time).

Charles was sitting cross-legged on the floor of their living room a few feet inside the door, oblivious to the puddle gathering around him and to the towel Raven hurled in the direction of his head. "It's all right, you're safe now," he was crooning quietly, pulling back the edges of the bundled, sodden wool. Having taken a few steps forward, craning her neck to try to see what the mysterious coat-creature was, Raven took a hurried few steps _back_ when a decidedly unfriendly yowl came from the depths of the fabric.

Movement, and then one green eye peering narrowly out from under a flap of coat, followed by a very bedraggled head. Ears, one torn and raw, lay flat against the cat's head as it peered around, shoulders hunched, too soaked to have fluffed up its fur menacingly. Raven supposed she should be grateful it was a cat, and not a fox or a raccoon (she couldn't put it past Charles), but it looked no less feral for it.

"Think we can corral it into your study while I call animal control?" she asked, taking up a wary perch on the arm of the sofa. "I'd say the bathroom, but I need to shower away the rest of that rain."

"What?" Charles looked up at her, shocked, in the middle of reaching for the towel. "We're going to keep him, Raven; he needs us." He moved the towel, not toward his own dripping... everything, but slowly toward the cat, which hissed.

"It looks like it needs an exorcism, Charles."

"No, he's a sweetheart, I'm sure. He's just scared, and--" he jerked back when the cat swiped at his hand, and his voice grew briefly soft and cajoling. "It's all right, _shh._ We aren't going to send you away; Raven was only joking." Another plaintive look up at her, which might have been less effective if he wasn't too pale and almost blue-lipped from the cold, a bedraggled creature himself.

Raven, with a few decades of experience of Charles looking plaintive under her belt, looked back at him unimpressed. It didn't take long before he cracked.

"Raven, he was all alone! He would have drowned if I'd just left him in that alley; look at him!"

Raven did. The cat had finally wriggled free of its cloth prison, and was hunkered down low, looking around the room like it was determining an escape route for after it had slaughtered them both. It was shivering too, its fur in wet clumps just like Charles's hair, every bit as pathetic as her brother looked. Fuck Charles and his late-night, drunken bouts of altruism. "Litter box goes in your room," she said, pointing a warning finger at him, and went off to the bathroom as Charles, gleeful, raised the towel again.

"You hear that? You're with us now. You're not alone, kitty; you're not a-- _fuck_!"

She didn't bother to turn around; the rumbling yowl that had preceded his swearing made her pretty sure he'd gotten what he deserved. He wouldn't bleed to death before she was done with her shower, she was certain. Fairly certain, at least.


End file.
